It has been a while now, but since Christmas I’ve been back working on the code.

The entire code base has been cleaned (with the help of these + CodeRush and Refactor!), the whole design is being improved, and lots of little bugs have been fixed. It’s already massively different and far more readable then before. I’m keeping the change log up to date with the code in the SVN CVS: http://ascgendotnet.jmsoftware.co.uk/changelog

The next release will be Ascgen dotNet version 2.0.0 (or to make things easier, Ascgen 2.0). I don’t know when it will be ready, it just depends on whether I want to release something functionally almost identical to the current version, or if I go forward with some new features.

The main new thing I want to add is a new method of conversion which will be available in addition to the current ones. It’s for fixed width fonts only, and gives a much better output for line art style images.

10 thoughts on “Future of the Ascgen”

At the moment it’s not ready for release, but you could download the source code from the svn at sourceforge and compile it yourself in Visual Studio Express C#.

It’s probably better to wait as there isn’t that much noticeable improvement, and there are a few new bugs. The new conversion stuff is being worked on separately and will be added to the main project later.

Great news, looks like things are picking up and the much better ASCGen.NET(v2) is coming along really well.
I hope that the new edition will have better support for visualizing text translations. Also, a refined batch processing method and a whole new image2text conversion method seem like neat ideas, we will have to wait to see how it actually behaves.

P.S. The continuous progress of the project is immensely appreciated. You(the developer) deserve much praise for creating the best ASCII art generator out there. I wish you success with the next releases of the application(and with your personal life as well)!

No news on this webpage since the beginning of 2010. And no news on Twitter since August 2010.
You seem so close to get a release version of AscGen 2.0, what is happening. I hope everything is fine and we will get our hands on your new fantastic tool in the near future. Keep us updated.

There are still a couple of big issues that need to be addressing before I can release (need to check exactly where I am with it). I’ll have time to work on them soon, so hopefully I’ll have a stable version ready at the start of next year.

I’m glad to hear that you’re doing fine and that progress with AscGEN2 v2 is still going good. Happy holidays!

The “so hopefully I’ll have a stable version ready at the start of next year” part really is something that a lot of AscGEN fans are looking forward to. And your commitment to work on this great piece of software makes people appreciate your awesome programming efforts. Keep up the good work!